HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HIGH AND LATE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 189porary material and arose in the context of lengthy inner-dynasticconflicts, based on which the author pleads for a strong ducal power.The chronicle depicts the Bohemian national and territorial historyfrom beginnings that are not to be got around, beginning—in thewave of the dispersion of peoples following the construction of theTower of Babel—with the seizure of land in the hitherto unsettledBohemian basin under the leadership of the ancestor Boemus (whichlate medieval historiography czekifies to Czech), after whom the newterritory is named Boemia. This aspect of the history of the peopleand country is complemented by a discourse on the history of rulingpowers, in which is depicted the end of the ‘Golden Age’ of societalequality under the lex nature by means of the establishment ofducal power and the overnatural legitimation of the ruling dynasty ofthe Przemyslids. The version of Bohemian history drafted by Cosmastherefore sparks particular interest because it marks the rare case inwhich people, dynasty, and territory are related historiographically.Elaboration and New Beginnings in the Thirteenth CenturyIn the thirteenth century, especially in the decades around 1200 andin the third quarter of the thirteenth century, one observes a renewedconcentration of the writing of national historical texts, whereby fourdevelopments can be distinguished: the continuation of the nationalhistoriographictradition founded in the first half of the twelfth centurywithout decisive conceptional innovations; the adoption of anolder tradition that is conceptionally revised; the new beginning inNorway and Denmark of comparable historiography on a nationalbasis, where previously there had not been records of that sort; andfinally the founding of a vernacular national-historical tradition inFrance and Spain 31 as well as in England, each in the 1270s.In Bohemia the national historiography of the thirteenth centuryexperienced no new impulses. The only reference text remained thechronicle of Cosmas of Prague, which was continued several times:directly following the death of Cosmas by an anonymous canon atthe Prague Vy“ehrad; then in the 1170s by a monk in the cloister31See Uitti (1985).